@msh210, @IsaacMoses, Are there trolls on the site today? That's at least four seemingly legitimate questions so far with comment-less downvotes.

@MonicaCellio pleasure, glad you enjoyed it!

whoever just gave me three "nice question" badges - thank you!!

@jake Not that I know of. Could you please link to them? Is it one or more than one downvote per question? If it's one, it could all be the work of one person. It looks like the most recent Critic badge awarded was a week ago, so it's not a whole bunch of new downvoters.

... The sudden storm of Nice Question badges awarded in the past 20 minutes is ... strange.

@IsaacMoses indeed, but not that strange. I've looked for good posts with 9 votes before so that I could give out badges.

... That looks like someone sorted all questions by net score and systematically upvoted as many +9 ones as possible.

@HodofHod What you said

@IsaacMoses I didn't do it like that though

@HodofHod More deliberate in your case?

Mine was less systematic, and more on a per-user basis. also, I made sure that the posts were good ones, at least IMo

i hope this user has done the same

@IsaacMoses perhaps it is this guy, who has used all 40 votes today judaism.stackexchange.com/users/973/rabbi-yaakov

@IsaacMoses Yeah, the "recent badges" list on the main page is all "nice question"s now. I know @HodofHod was doing something like that (thoughtfully, not mechanically), as he said here. I hope this one is too. I mean, the three badges are nice and all, but I sure hope it's because somebody found actual merit in the questions. :-)

@IsaacMoses Then again, he was last seen 35 minutes ago, and the most recent badges are from 20 minutes ago, though I don;t know how accurate either of those numbers are

@HodofHod It looks like the first 38 were the results of votes cast in a span of under 5 minutes, implying an average of under 8 seconds per vote.

@HodofHod Today? It looks like he got Vox Populi on Feb 6.

@IsaacMoses you can't get it twice

@IsaacMoses So if that's all one person, the SE vote-fraud detector may undo a bunch of them. Hmm.

@IsaacMoses look at his user page, 40 votes today

@MonicaCellio I think that only works if he upvotes mostly one other user

@HodofHod Ah. I see.

although i could be wrong

@HodofHod That's the mode we know about. There could be all kinds of algorithms in there we know nothing about.

@IsaacMoses true that

@MonicaCellio That would remove the rep benefits, but not the badges, FWIW

btw, I think i finally figured out why avi's gravatar keeps changing. I dont know if anyone else saw, or cared)

Hi, @DoubleAA

The circumstantial evidence points to the answer to your meta question being "someone being nice".

Hi

@HodofHod Just him, or have others' changed too?

I just posted on meta about the badges here meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/q/792/759

Then I came here to see what was up

@MonicaCellio It seems just his, though i could be wrong

@DoubleAA Hi.

@HodofHod So what's the explanation?

@DoubleAA someones looking a gift horse in the mouth..... :-D

I count 41 badges awarded within 3 minutes (based on here judaism.stackexchange.com/badges/46/nice-question)

maybe I miscounted

but that is more than the vote limit I think

@DoubleAA I think it may be possible to beat the vote limit on the margin by voting very quickly.

*oops within 5 minutes

He must have opened all the pages in different tabs and moved quickly.

@IsaacMoses c.f. chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3378655#3378655

Anyone else have anything on @Jake's query?

Another possibility: perhaps the SE badge-condition-checker code runs in bursts? I've seen delays between when I "earned" a badge and when it was awarded. If some server was down or backlogged, maybe several hours' worth of awards got batched?

@MonicaCellio Unlikely, because my reputation page lists the +5 upvotes at the same time.

@IsaacMoses I saw a question with two commentless downvotes a couple hours ago (and I up-voted to offset one of them), but I don't remember which one. But there were two on one question.

@MonicaCellio There's a whole bunch at one time, then another bunch five minutes later. It looks to me like the batching is 5 minutes.

@MonicaCellio @DoubleAA same by me

@DoubleAA Oh, good point.

maybe some kind of an upvote recalc?

@IsaacMoses It was this one: judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/14215/…

Are you guys able to see "seen 9 minutes ago" on my user page?

@IsaacMoses 10 minutes ago. But yes

@IsaacMoses yes

@DoubleAA Thanks, so I can say:

We can see your website, location, age, member for, last seen, and profile views.

@HodofHod Our suspected uber-voter was "seen 51 minutes ago" which at least puts him actually on the site today.

@IsaacMoses true, but wouldn't his "last seen" stat be his most recent interaction, or upvote?

@IsaacMoses @IsaacMoses Isn't that too long ago?

wow, we've got quite the gathering in here. hello @jake

@ShmuelBrill you still around?

@HodofHod I have no idea. It could be the beginning of the session. Anyway, the first of the spate of NQ badges was awarded at 04:16:31Z. His "last seen" was 04:07:49Z. Probably close enough.

@IsaacMoses Hello. The posts I was talking about above: judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/14189/…, judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/14215/…, judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/14206/…, judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/14213/…

... the "last seen" could also be heavily batched/cached.

It appears I'm the only one to have received 4 badges out of this :)

@jake not I

@HodofHod Oh ok, nevermind.

@jake Thanks. Two of them got exactly one downvote, and both of those seem pretty innocuous. I'd chalk it up to general weirdness.

... the other two may have gotten multiple downvotes due to perceived irreverance.

I've got to duck out -- past my bedtime. TTY'all L.

This doesn't look like a troll attack to me.

@MonicaCellio Good morning.

@IsaacMoses Fair enough. Just hadn't seen something like that on here before.

@jake speaking of him, I always wondered if he was the same person as @RabbiGabriel

but now I see they have the same website

and @RabbiGabriel has the same pic as @GabrielleChasine....

the plot thickens....

@IsaacMoses Can't we ping the user in question from here in chat asking him if it was him?

(He might not respond but...)

@HodofHod And the pic is of R' Musafi (pretty sure), which said user quotes, like, a lot.

@DoubleAA If I thought it was important enough for such a summons, I could. I'm not convinced that it is, though.

@jake and that pic is also the background picture on his website...

@HodofHod Stalk much? :)

@jake busted

@IsaacMoses fair enough

@jake not often, I noticed that they seemed similar a while back (something one of them said, i think). I only just realized the connections now when i hit the "users" page and searched for gabriel

@IsaacMoses, I was wondering about something else also. I have a couple of questions on my mind about Biblical Hebrew, and I am committed to the hebrew.SE proposal on area51. You think I should just ask here, or wait for the new site if/when it launches?

@jake dont hold your breath on that launch

@jake Al tomar likesheyilaunch eshal, shema lo yilaunch

@HodofHod Yeah. I sometimes notice similar things about other users. Like that guy from Ben's Talit shop that kept on making new accounts.

@jake haven't seen him recently, is he still around?

@IsaacMoses True that. Besides, I'll probably forget them by then anyway.

@HodofHod Dunno. He shows up every once in a while.

@jake Things like that happen inadvertently with new users every once in a while. Given that Rabbi Gabriel and Gabrielle Chasine were both last seen in December, my first suspicion would be that they're accidental dupes. I may message them asking if they are and want to be merged.

@IsaacMoses laughed out loud on that one

@HodofHod :) thanks

Guess I'm warming up for this year's Purim Torah season, which seems will be on.

Speaking of which, anyone here against that?

@IsaacMoses Oh, what did we decide about that in the end?

@jake It's not officially decided, but if ~ a week passes with no dissent, I'm probably going to go ahead and codify something along the lines of Monica's answer.

@IsaacMoses Will there be some sort of announcement when the time comes so people will know that Purim-Torah in now on topic?

As I was saying to @HodofHod earlier, I'm surprised that we haven't had someone come through and try to asser it.

@jake I'd say it'd probably be a featured meta post laying down the rules, which would be referenced in the tag wiki for purim-torah-in-jest and in the disclaimer that would have to be pasted into every P"T question.

That plus the back-edits of the disclaimer into the existing P"T questions should be enough to get the attention of those who'd be interested.

... There's also the potential that @msh210 will take @MonicaCellio's advice and make it the topic of the week for one of the relevant weeks

@IsaacMoses Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to allow such questions on the site. Maybe we should just have a Purim-Torah chat room.

@jake Dissent! Mazal Tov! Go post an answer, so it can look like we considered both sides!

(joking about "so it can ...")

@IsaacMoses It's not really dissent. It's not like there's any effort on my part. Just saying it might be easier for the mods.

@jake Two of said mods posted four of the five P"T questions last year. I think it's unlikely they'll mind. :)

(and the fifth, FTR, was by someone who was a mod at the time)

@IsaacMoses Ok! Purim Torah it is then. Looking forward.

@jake It looks likely that it'll be permitted. Whether people post any remains to be seen.

@IsaacMoses Time to go. Good night/morning.

@jake You, too. Still pm for me.

I see a discussion about me, and I feel compelled to enter :-)

@HachamGabriel Good morning, or whatever it is where you are.

@MonicaCellio never saw this post, sorry. gravatars are based on an md5 hash of either the user's email address, or if there is none, then the users IP address (with a salt). So apparently, avi has changed his email or IP address several times, which in turn changed his icon

reference: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/122039/…

@HodofHod Thanks! I had no idea they weren't just random.

@MonicaCellio yeah, neither did I, until yesterday.

@jake I wouldn't assume that that's the work of a troll ("A person who posts to a newsgroup, bulletin board, etc., in a way intended to anger other posters and to cause drama, or otherwise disrupt the group's intended purpose"). More likely someone who didn't think highly of the posts.

@ShmuelBrill you around?

@msh210 dont count on it, he's been idle in here since yesterday

@HodofHod Yeah, he often is. But he was recently active on the site, so I thought.... Thanks for the pointer, though.

@msh210 true, I guess we'll find out :-)

@HodofHod, do you not think, assuming it's straight (i.e. not meant in jest), that it's valid? – msh210♦ 2 mins ago

@msh210 you just stole my idea of bringing it here

@HodofHod Hm? Of bringing that question (that I just quoted) here to chat?

@msh210 yes, i was halfway through an answer when you brought it here.

@HodofHod Ah.

@msh210 It is as valid as the other, certainly, but I think it must have been asked a little tounge in cheek

@HodofHod Who, me?

@msh210 the achashverosh one (unless that chat msg was also meant tongue in cheek, i couldn't tell)

if it was, sorry

@HodofHod Yes, I know which one you meant. I meant, "What, that question? Tongue-in-cheek? Naaaaaah, never."

@msh210 thought so, but wasnt sure. :-)

:3392226 yeah, i'm tethering on EDGE. leads to wierd things

@HodofHod Okay... I looked up EDGE... going to look up tethering. :-)

@msh210 I've mentioned this before here, but I don't remember if it was with you. Do you agree with me that recently there has been a dearth of "Jewish Life" questions in favor of mostly "Jewish Learning" ones?

@HodofHod Yes, and has been for a while. I don't see that as a problem, though certainly 'life' questions can be very interesting.

@msh210 true, and true.

i do think it might make the site seem a bit too cut and dry for people who happen to stumble upon it

@HodofHod It may indeed.

@msh210 maybe I'll think up some seed questions, or perhaps a new weekly topic.